Mildred Pierce (36 page)

She dressed with a great deal of care the next afternoon, and when she surveyed herself in the long mirror, it was with quite a little satisfaction. For the last few months, perhaps as a result of the woe that had weighted her down, she hadn’t put on any more weight, and the special girdle certainly held her belly in quite nicely. The new dress had a smart, casual look to it, and was of a becoming length, so that enough of her legs showed, but not too much. The big hat gave her a slightly flirty, Merry Widow look. The shoes flattered her feet, and set off the whole costume with a bit of zip. She tried a silver fox fur, decided it was right, and wore it. In truth, although she didn’t look quite as she imagined she did, she looked rather interesting. She looked like a successful woman of business, with the remains of a rather seductive figure, a face of little distinction but considerable authority, a credit to that curious world that had produced her, Southern California.

It didn’t suit her plans to have Tommy along, so she stepped into the car herself and was pleased at the expert way she handled it. She went zipping over the bridge to Pasadena, from the traffic
circle down Orange Grove Avenue. When she got to the Beragon mansion, Monty was sitting on the steps waiting for her. She went roaring up the drive, stopped in front of him, said ‘Well!’ and held out her hand. He took it, then jumped in beside her. Both were smiling, but a little pang shot through her at the change in him. He wore slacks, but they were cheap and unpressed. His bald spot was bigger: it had grown from the size of a quarter to the size of a big silver dollar. He was thin and lined, and had a brooding, hang-dog look that was very different from the jaunty air he had once had. As to how she looked, he made no comment, and indeed indulged in no personal talk of any kind. He said he wanted her to see a place in the Oak Knoll section, quite decent, very reasonable. Would she care to drive over there? She said she’d love to.

By the time they had looked at places in the Oak Knoll section, the Altadena section, and the South Pasadena section, and nothing quite suited her, he seemed a little irritated. From the glib way he quoted prices, she knew he
had
called up the agents, in spite of her telling him not to, and that he would get a little split if she bought. But she paid no attention, and around five headed for Orange Grove Avenue again, to bring him home. Rather curtly, he said goodbye, and got out, and started inside, and then, as a sort of afterthought, stood waiting for her to leave. Pensively, she sat at the wheel, looking at the house, and then she cut the motor, got out, and stood looking at it. Then she let a noisy sigh escape her, and said, ‘Beautiful, beautiful!’

‘It
could
be, with a little money spent on it.’

‘Yes, that’s what I mean . . . What do they want for it, Monty?’

For the first time that afternoon, Monty really looked at her. All the places he had taken her to had been quoted around ten thousand dollars: evidently it hadn’t occurred to him she could possibly be interested in this formidable pile. He stared, then said: ‘Year before last, seventy-five flat and it’s worth every cent of it. Last year, fifty. This year, thirty, subject to a lien of thirty-one hundred for unpaid taxes – all together around thirty-three thousand dollars.’

Mildred’s information was that it could be had for twenty-eight and a half, plus the tax lien, and she noted ironically that
he was a little better salesman than she had given him credit for. However, all she said was: ‘Beautiful, beautiful!’ Then she went to the door, and peeped in.

It had changed somewhat since her last visit, that night in the rain. All the furniture, all the paintings, all the rugs, all the dust cloths, were gone, and in places the paper hung down in long strips. When she tiptoed inside, her shoes gritted on the floor, and she could hear gritty, hesitant echoes of her steps. Keeping up a sort of self-conscious commentary, he led her through the first floor, then up to the second. Presently they were in his own quarters, the same servants’ apartment he had occupied before. The servants’ furniture was gone, but in its place were a few oak pieces with leather seats, which she identified at once as having come from the shack at Lake Arrowhead. She sat down, sighed and said it certainly would feel good to rest for a few minutes. He quickly offered tea, and when she accepted he disappeared into the bedroom. Then he came out and asked: ‘Or would you like something stronger? I have the heel of a bottle here.’

‘I’d love something stronger.’

‘I’m out of ice and seltzer, but—’

‘I prefer it straight.’

‘Since when?’

‘Oh, I’ve changed a lot.’

The bottle turned out to be Scotch, which to her taste was quite different from rye. As she gagged over the first sip he laughed and said: ‘Oh, you haven’t changed much. On liquor I’d say you were about the same.’

‘That’s what
you
think.’

He checked this lapse into the personal, and resumed his praise of the house. She said: ‘Well, you don’t have to sell me. I’m already sold, if
wanting
it is all. And you don’t have to sit over there yelling at me, as though I was deaf. There’s room over here, isn’t there?’

Looking a little foolish, he crossed to the settee she was occupying. She took his little finger, tweaked it. ‘You haven’t even asked me how I am, yet.’

‘How are you?’

‘Fine.’

‘Then that’s that.’

She tweaked his little finger again. He drew it away and said: ‘You know, gentlemen in my circumstances don’t have a great deal of romance in their lives. If you keep this up, you might find yourself the victim of some ravening-brute, and you wouldn’t like that, would you?’

‘Oh, being ravened isn’t so bad.’

He looked away quickly, and said: ‘I think we’ll talk about the house.’

‘One thing bothers me about it.’

‘What’s that?’

‘If I should buy it, as I’m half a mind to, where would you be? Would there be a brute ravening around somewhere, or would I have it all to myself?’

‘It would be all yours.’

‘I see.’

She reached again for his finger. He pulled it away before she caught it, looking annoyed. Then, rather roughly, he put his arm around her. ‘Is that what you want?’

‘H’m-h’m.’

‘Then that’s that.’

But she had barely settled back when he took his arm away. ‘I made a slight mistake about the price of this house. To you, it’s twenty-nine thousand, five hundred, and eighty. That’ll square up a little debt I owe you, of five hundred and twenty dollars, that’s been bothering me for quite some time.’

‘You owe me a debt?’

‘If you try, I think you can recall it.’

He looked quite wolfish, and she said ‘Booh!’ He laughed, took her in his arms, touched the zipper on the front of her dress. Some little time went by, one half of him, no doubt, telling him to let the zipper alone, the other half telling him it would be ever so pleasant to give it a little pull. Then she felt her dress loosen, as the zipper began to slide. Then she felt herself being carried. Then she felt herself, with suitable roughness, being dumped down on the same iron bed, on the same tobacco-laden blankets, from which she had kicked the beach bag, years before, at Lake Arrowhead.

‘Damn it, your legs are still immoral.’

‘You think they’re bowed?’

‘Stop waving them around.’

‘I asked you—’

‘No.’

Around dark, she grew sentimentally weepy. ‘Monty, I couldn’t live here without you. I couldn’t, that’s all.’

Monty lay still, and smoked a long time. Then, in a queer, shaky voice he said: ‘I always said you’d make some guy a fine wife if you didn’t live in Glendale.’

‘Are you asking me to marry you?’

‘If you move to Pasadena, yes.’

‘You mean if I buy this house.’

‘No – it’s about three times as much house as you need, and I don’t insist on it. But I will not live in Glendale.’

‘Then all
right
!’

She snuggled up to him, tried to be kittenish, but while he put his arm around her he continued sombre, and he didn’t look at her. Presently it occurred to her that he might be hungry, and she asked if he would like to ride to Laguna with her, and have dinner. He thought a moment, then laughed. ‘You’d better go to Laguna alone, and I’ll open myself another can of beans. My clothes, at the moment, aren’t quite suitable to dining out. Unless, of course, you want me to put on a dinner coat. That mockery of elegance happens to be all I have left.’

‘We never had that New Year’s party yet.’

‘Oh didn’t we?’

‘And we don’t have to go to Laguna . . . I love you in a dinner coat, Monty. If you’ll put one on, and then drive over with me while I put on my mockery of elegance, we can step out. We can celebrate our engagement. That is, if we really are engaged.’

‘All right, let’s do it.’

She spanked him on his lean rump, hustled him out of bed, and jumped out after him. She was quite charming in such moments, when she took absurd liberties with him, and for one flash his face lit up, and he kissed her before they started to dress. But he was sombre again when they arrived at her house. She put out whisky, ice, and seltzer, and he made himself a drink.
While she was dressing he wandered restlessly about, then put his head in her bedroom and asked if he could put a telegram on her phone. ‘I’d like mother to know.’

‘Would you like to talk to her?’

‘It’s a Philadelphia call.’

‘Well, my goodness, you act as if it was Europe. Certainly call her up. And you can tell her it’s all settled about the house, at thirty thousand,
without
any foolish deductions of five hundred and twenty dollars, or whatever it was. If that’s what’s been worrying her, tell her not to worry any more.’

‘I’d certainly love to.’

He went to the den, and she went on with her dressing. The blue evening dress was long since outmoded, but she had another one, a black one, that she liked very well, and she had just laid it out when he appeared at the door. ‘She wants to speak to you.’

‘Who?’

‘Mother.’

In spite of success, money, and long experience at dealing with people, a qualm shot through Mildred as she sat down to the phone, in a hastily-donned kimono, to talk to this woman she had never met. But when she picked up the receiver and uttered a quavery hello, the cultured voice that spoke to her was friendship itself. ‘Mrs Pierce?’

‘Yes, Mrs Beragon.’

‘Or perhaps you’d like me to call you Mildred?’

‘I’d love it, Mrs Beragon.’

‘I just wanted to say that Monty has told me about your plan to be married, and I think it splendid. I’ve never met you, but from all I’ve heard, from so many, many people, I always felt you were the one wife for Monty, and I secretly hoped, as mothers often do, that one day it might come to pass.’

‘Well, that’s terribly nice of you, Mrs Beragon. Did Monty tell you about the house?’

‘He did, and I do want you to be happy there, and I’m sure you will. Monty is so attached to it, and he tells me you like it too and that’s a big step toward happiness, isn’t it?’

‘I would certainly think so. And I do hope that some time you’ll pay us a visit there, and, and—’

‘I’ll be delighted. And how is darling Veda?’

‘She’s just fine. She’s singing, you know.’

‘My dear, I heard her, and I was astonished – not really of course, because I always felt that Veda had big things in her. But even allowing for all that, she quite bowled me over. You have a very gifted daughter, Mildred.’

‘I’m certainly glad you think so, Mrs Beragon.’

‘You’ll remember me to her?’

‘I certainly will, Mrs Beragon.’

She hung up flushed, beaming, sure she had done very well, but Monty’s face had such an odd look that she asked: ‘What’s the matter?’

‘
Where
is Veda?’

‘She – took an apartment by herself, a few months ago. It bothered her to have all the neighbours listening while she vocalised.’

‘That must have been messy.’

‘It was – terrible.’

Within a week, the Beragon mansion looked as though it had been hit by bombs. The main idea of the alterations, which were under the supervision of Monty, was to restore what had been a large but pleasant house to what it had been before it was transformed into a small but hideous mansion. To that end the porticoes were torn off, the iron dogs removed, the palm trees grubbed up, so the original grove of live oaks was left as it had been, without tropical incongruities. What remained, after all this hacking, was so much reduced in size that Mildred suddenly began to feel some sense of identity with it. When the place as it would be began to emerge from the scaffolding, when the yellow paint had been burned off with torches and replaced with a soft, whitewash, when green shutters were in place, when a small, friendly entrance had taken the place of the former Monticello effect, she began to fall in love with it, and could hardly wait until it was finished. Her delight increased when Monty judged the exterior sufficiently advanced to proceed with the interior, and its furnishings. His mood continued dark, and he made no more allusions to the five hundred and twenty dollars, or
Glendale, or anything of a personal kind. But he seemed bent on pleasing Mildred, and it constantly surprised her, the way he was able to translate her ideas into paint, wood, and plaster.